READ ME: Why your New Year's Resolution isn't important enough

We’re heading into February. The 1st January and our big goals and long list of New Year’s Resolutions already seems a long way off. Statistically most of us will have already failed to stick to those big promises we made.

Are you one of those statistics?

At The Reset we’re all about setting goals and doing big, brave things.

But there’s a question that almost everyone fails to ask when we set these goals.

WHY?

Asking ourselves why we want to achieve our goals is often a tough question. But it’s absolutely critical to setting new year’s resolutions that you actually want to stick to.

New Year’s Resolutions can often come from a place of negativity and self-doubt. And it’s no wonder really: over the holidays we often overindulge, lay around watching a lot of TV and fall out of good habits.

We hit the 31st December and we’re feeling seriously sorry for ourselves. This means the resolutions we set ourselves often come from a place of real insecurity. Suddenly you think you should set a goal to lose weight, go to the gym more, get a new job or do something else drastic in your life. You see everyone else around you saying this will be the year they’ll ‘smash it’ and you think you need to do the same.

But should goals are never going to be something you want to stick to. Because at the core, there is no real reason driving you.

Achieving goals can be really tough and there will be difficult times where you want to give up. If you don’t have a clear idea of why the goal is important to you, it’s more likely you’ll quit.

Let’s take your goal right now and give it a good grilling. Write it out, and then try to write down 3-5 compelling statements, words or sentences to answers these questions:

Why is this goal important to you?

What value does this goal have to you?

What would the goal give you?

What is at stake if you don’t achieve it?

How does that make you feel? If you came up with lots of exciting things that this goal could lead to, or brilliant value words – maybe things like pride, achievement, freedom, security - you’re on to something good.

But if you struggled to come up with answers, you might have set the wrong goal.

For example, if you decided you wanted to lose 2 stone this year and the only reason you can think to do it is to look better than your friend on the beach this summer, it might just be that ‘lose 2 stone’ isn’t the right goal for you. It’s a bit of an empty goal – there’s no real value to your life in achieving this. Try to reframe it and come up with a goal that is going to have true, lasting value to you.

Sometimes this process will bring up a lot of other things. It’s great if there are lots of thoughts swirling around to write them all down. Put down on paper all the phrases and feelings that come up when you look at what’s important to you. You might start to see patterns.

This process (which is basically journaling) will help you unjumble the thoughts in your mind. You’ll start to see more clearly what you value in your life and how you can take a step closer to bringing more of it to you.